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2 - Laughing at the Law:

Johnnie To’s Justice, My Foot!*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 February 2021

Marco Wan
Affiliation:
The University of Hong Kong
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Summary

In Chapter 2, I situate Johnnie To’s popular comedy, Justice, My Foot! (1992 審死官), which revolves around a lawyer defending a woman falsely accused of murdering her husband, in light of the drafting of the Basic Law and passage of the Bill of Rights in early-1990s Hong Kong. I argue that To’s film, which appeared at cinemas a mere three years after the 1989 Tiananmen Square crackdown in Beijing, can be approached as a screening of a nightmare scenario on the minds of many viewers at the time: A Hong Kong-style lawyer trying to defend the innocent and maintain justice in a Chinese-style legal system that disregards basic human rights and that is plagued by corruption and nepotism. I will then explore the function of humor in the film to show how Justice, My Foot! repackages anxieties about the sinicization of law into a marketable cultural product for mass consumption.

Type
Chapter
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Film and Constitutional Controversy
Visualizing Hong Kong Identity in the Age of 'One Country, Two Systems'
, pp. 46 - 60
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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  • Laughing at the Law:
  • Marco Wan, The University of Hong Kong
  • Book: Film and Constitutional Controversy
  • Online publication: 05 February 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108863025.003
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  • Laughing at the Law:
  • Marco Wan, The University of Hong Kong
  • Book: Film and Constitutional Controversy
  • Online publication: 05 February 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108863025.003
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Laughing at the Law:
  • Marco Wan, The University of Hong Kong
  • Book: Film and Constitutional Controversy
  • Online publication: 05 February 2021
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108863025.003
Available formats
×